Document 2: Rozette Hendrix,
"President's Annual Address," Minutes of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Meeting of
the W.C.T.U. of the State of Minnesota (Minneapolis: Thurston & Gould, 1912).

Introduction

Roth
defines a social movement as "something that people create to press for social
change," in order to "challenge" existing power structures. The Minnesota
Woman's Christian Temperance movement aptly illustrates such a challenge.
The Minnesota WCTU was established in 1877 as part of the national Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, itself founded three years earlier. Over time
the organization moved from temperance to an increasingly secular philosophy
of "do everything," a policy articulated by Frances Willard, national president
from 1879 to 1898. While in the early years of the movement members shied
away from appearing as public political figures, a task they thought unwomanly,
by the early twentieth century members of the Minnesota WCTU openly described
themselves as politicians. The forty departments of the WCTU campaigned for
a variety of social reforms including woman suffrage, prohibition, workplace
protections for women workers, and scientific temperance education in schools.
Through their reform work members created new public roles for themselves,
expanding the culturally defined place of women in their society.

The
document below, which also appears in "Minnesota
Woman's Christian Temperance Union," was the 1912 annual address of the
Minnesota WCTU's president, Rozette Hendrix. This document reveals the many
ways that WCTU members worked to challenge existing power structures in their
activities to bring about social change.

DEAR COMRADES:---

Thirty-five years ago this month, the white ribbon women of Minnesota
met in their first annual convention in Minneapolis. Each year since
at our homecoming we have been able to rejoice over the advance made
by our organization. And we come this year with hearts full of praise
and gratitude for the guidance, blessings and victories that have been
vouchsafed us during the past year, and with prayer that God will guide
us during the coming year and that we may be more worthy of his love
and care.

Three years have passed since you made me your president. We then had
193 unions and 15 Y's paying dues with a membership of 4,122. We now
have 235 unions and 11 Y.P.B.'s with a membership of 5,226. A gain in
membership in the three years of 1,104. 1,500 new members have been
added to our list this year but on account of removals to other states
and to other parts of our own state where there are no unions, and on
account of some growing weary in well doing and because some have been
promoted to the home beyond we have only made a net gain of 302.

During these three years the state has adopted three new departments
of work; established an Exchange Bureau for the benefit of the local
unions.[B] During the two which this bureau has existed 583 papers
and 80 leaflets and pamphlets have been sent out; material furnished
for programs for four temperance Sundays in Sunday Schools; three programs
for local unions for the year outlined; two outlines for a year's study
course; suggestions and topics for Bible readings; material for programs
for a course of six mother's meetings. 139 unions have had papers and
two places where there were no unions. Four states besides our own have
availed themselves of this bureau, papers being sent to Wisconsin, Illinois,
South Dakota and Washington. 234 letters have been written in the interest
of this work. During these three years the state has also adopted the
College Y.P.B. work, the second state to take up this line of work.[C] Many students have been reached not
only with lectures, but also with literature as each College and High
School organization is given besides helps, a year's subscription to
the Union Signal. The state has sent out in the field 6 National, 13
state and 22 district workers. We have been able also to have W.C.T.U.
women placed as lecturers at eleven summer schools for teachers. Have
put the two books "Alcohol and the Human Body", by Sir Victor Horsley;
"Alcohol a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine", by Martha Allen, in
32 colleges and given a year's subscription to the Union Signal to fifty
public libraries.[D] Furnished a package of 100 leaflets to be distributed
at every public meeting held by a state worker; five copies of State
Minutes have been sent to each local union and helps to all new unions.
These are but few of the many things planned and carried out by the
state W.C.T.U., for I have not time to tell of all the special services,
petitions, letters and telegrams nor appeals to Senators and Representatives
both at Washington and at home; but when we add to all this the work
done by state superintendents, district officers and local unions we
begin to realize the work that is being done in the state.

The record of these three years show how earnestly our white ribbon
women in every section of the state have been at work. The state officers
sincerely thank the local unions for their hearty co-operation in all
plans outlined by the state. These years of splendid service and concerted
action have brought us many victories and made a great advancement in
our cause, creating temperance sentiment, moulding public opinion, causing
a general awakening for temperance and purity in the home and in the
government. All this work has made possible the campaign we are now
engaged in for state wide prohibition. These years of service have brought
us more closely together, bound our ranks in more solid bonds, making
us stronger to overcome all obstacles and to march on to victory.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union has ever had in mind the welfare
of the child, and more and more this has become the important question
among the advanced thinkers of the age. Among other things advocated
for several years has been a children's bureau, and in April after five
years' struggle, Congress established such a department, and President
Taft appointed Miss Julia C. Lathrop as chief; she is the first woman
ever put in by the government as the head of a bureau. This bureau will
"investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of
children and child life", especially "infant mortality, the birthrate,
physical degeneracy, orphanage, Juvenile Courts, desertion, dangerous
occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment and legislation
affecting children," and the results of these investigations will be
published from time to time.[E]

At the General Methodist Conference held in Minneapolis, it was stated
that "greed for gain has put two and a half million children under sixteen
years of age into mills, factories, mines and messenger service."[F] Years ago the women began a war against child labor
and also to procure compulsory educational laws, and sentiment has been
created and much done along these lines. By the revision of our own
state laws children under sixteen years of age are prohibited from employment
in factories or building operations; and children under fourteen years
of age are prohibited from taking part in theatrical entertainments
without permission of the mayor and president of the council; and girls
under twenty-one years of age are prohibited from being employed in
messenger service; and children under sixteen years of age are required
to be in school unless by special permit.

More and more the question of the evil effect of alcohol upon children
is being agitated. Dr. Alexander MacNicholl, in an address before the
American Medical Society in Atlantic City, said, in part, "A wave of
degeneracy is sweeping the land, a degeneracy so appalling in magnitude
that it staggers the mind and threatens to destroy this republic. The
application of modern scientific methods have reduced the mortality
from acute diseases, such as typhoid, yellow fever and the plague and
by abolishing the sources and exterminating the fly, the mosquito and
the rat, the average length of life has been increased. With what marked
contrast do we deal with alcohol that most potent source and carrier
of chronic disease. Today chronic disorders of the lungs, heart, kidneys
and other organs are responsible for more than half the deaths. A hundred
different intermediate agencies may contribute to the undoing of the
race, but back of them all stands alcohol as the chief degenerative
factor. Statistics compiled by the leading insurance companies show
that of every one thousand deaths among the population at large, four
hundred and forty are due to alcohol. This would mean a mortality from
alcohol in the United States of six hundred and eighty thousand a year.

The great burden of drink is not borne by the drinker, but by the drinker's
children. In one institute for the treatment of physical defectives,
a recent study shows that every patient is the child of drinking parents.
For every child of total abstainers that dies under two years of age,
five children of drinking parents die. One out of every five children
born to drinking parents will be insane. One out of every three will
suffer from epilepsy and hysteria. Seventy-five percent of tuberculosis
children are the children of drinking parents.

When four-fifths of the most representative men in America are pronounced
unfit for war, what shall we say of their fitness to father the next
generation? The time was when alcohol was received as a benefit to the
race, but we no longer look upon alcohol as a food but as a poison.
Boards of health, armed with the police power of the state eradicate
the causes of typhoid and quarantine the victims, but alcohol, a thousand
times more destructive to public health, continues to destroy. Alcoholic
degeneracy is the most important sanitary question before the country,
and yet the health authorities do not take action, as alcohol is entrenched
in politics. Leaders in politics dare not act, as their political destiny
lies in the hands of the agents of the liquor traffic. We are face to
face with the greatest crisis in our country's history. The alcohol
question must be settled within the next ten years or some more virile
race will write the epitaph of this country".

These are not the words of a W.C.T.U. woman or a temperance fanatic,
or a reformer, but of a life long student of the alcohol problem, and
one of the world's distinguished scientists and physicians. In the face
of such facts as these how can any man or woman, any true citizen withhold
their influence and help in getting rid of this evil? How can any true
citizen withhold his ballot against this traffic now legalized and protected
by our government? How can any political party, seeking to promote the
general welfare of the people keep silent on this great question? Is
it not the duty of every citizen to do his utmost to remove the cause
of this degeneracy? There is no remedy but to prohibit the traffic.
The same message sent by the sinking Titanic, "Come, quick, danger",
is the message coming from thousands of mothers' hearts all over our
state to our citizens, "come quick, give us men to make our laws who
will recognize the danger existing for our boys and girls and who will
make our state safer for them." We with the rest of the world, mourned
the terrible disaster that overtook the Titanic on the night of April
14, but as we read of the heroic sacrifices of husbands, brothers and
sons for wives, sisters and mothers then, it gives us a conviction that
the true manhood of our state will give their support to the womanhood
of Minnesota in their effort to protect the homes and the boys and girls
from the evil of the liquor traffic.

Two stars have been added to our flag for the two new states, New Mexico
and Arizona. No sooner had Mexico become a state than she began to plan
for the welfare of the children, and passed a model Scientific Temperance
Instruction law. It is a clear statement of the teaching required for
pupils and the preparation of the teacher. School officers, school directors,
superintendents and teachers are held responsible for the neglect of
the enforcement of the law. These things point to a general awakening
of the people along these lines.

A victory for temperance has been won this past year by the act prohibiting
the importation, manufacture and sale of absinthe in the United States.[G] Absinthe is one of the most intoxicating drugs that
is sold as a beverage. It is an alcoholic liquor containing oils of
wormwood, anise and so forth. Its free use has been confined to France
but other countries have been greatly affected by it. Belgium, Holland
and Switzerland have passed laws forbidding its manufacture, sale and
importation. And the Senate of France has now taken similar action,
and also Brazil. The law in the United States becomes effective after
October first.

SUFFRAGE.

One of the great events of the past year, perhaps the greatest of the
century is the birth of the new Republic of China. Hampton's Magazine
for May says, "China new born to Democracy, the biggest and oldest of
the nations, has given the ballot to women at the same time it has given
it to men. The Eternal Feminine no longer sit on the steps of the throne.
She is at the right hand of Man, her Brother, and she is Queen."[H]

Some of our states are trying to reach the pace set by China. During
the past year another state has been added to those already giving women
full suffrage. There are now six states where women vote on an equality
with men; Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Utah and California.
Five states are in a campaign for full suffrage, Kansas, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Oregon and Nevada. Ohio was defeated. It is estimated that
about one million two hundred and fifty thousand women are entitled
to vote at the coming presidential election, in the six states now having
full suffrage, and these six states have thirty-seven votes in the electoral
college. Then if the four states that vote upon this question in September
should win, Ohio, Oregon, Kansas and Wisconsin, it would mean twenty-seven
more electoral votes from states where women vote, making a total of
sixty-four in the electoral college of five hundred and thirty-one votes.
These facts seem to have come to the minds of the presidential candidates
as a matter worth considering, for they have either declared themselves
in favor of full suffrage for women or they try to smooth the situation
by saying that women can have the ballot whenever they want it.

"Dr. Gunsaulus says "There never was a time when the vote of American
womanhood would be more significant than just at present. How absurd
that women who suffer most because of intemperance should not be permitted
to have anything to do with settling the question of the saloon."[I]

Women who are the home makers are the ones who are most concerned in
these matters and when they have had a chance to vote, they have shown
their interest. Eighty percent of the women voting in Seattle, at the
time Mayor Gill was recalled, were married women, home makers, the very
ones who should be interested and should have a voice in the matter.
Last spring when the regular election in Seattle came around and Gill
came up for re-election, the women again became interested and George
F. Cottrell was elected by a small majority, though the single tax and
municipal ownership propositions were defeated by several thousands.
In the beginning of the campaign all politicians said Cottrell did not
have a chance, because he stood for single tax, municipal ownership
and prohibition. A combination unheard of before. Cottrell is a National
officer of the I.O.G.T. and a prominent temperance speaker.[J] One of the daily papers said, "The election of Cottrell
is regarded as another victory for the women voters who fought Gill
to a finish". Another daily says, "The women are showing discrimination
in their voting. They snubbed Socialism in Los Angeles and rejected
the wide open type of statesman in Seattle. It appears to have been
good work in both towns".[K]

The women in Australia, New Zealand, Isle of Man, Finland, Norway, Sweden
and Tasmania have full suffrage. England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Iceland,
Denmark and Natal (S.Af.) have Municipal suffrage. Norway has a woman
elected to Parliament, Miss Anna Rogstad, she was elected as an alternate
for General Brattie and when his military duties required him to resign
his seat in Parliament, Miss Rogstad took his place. When she entered
Parliament, all the members arose and the galleries applauded and the
president of Parliament made a welcome speech in honor of the first
woman member. When she made her first speech the members arose and stood
during the time and showered her with flowers when she was through.

PURITY.

There is an aroused interest along all lines of Purity, not only in
work done by our own organization but by others. A National Society
of Moral Hygiene to promote sex teaching has been started, and an American
Vigilance Association has been formed by merging the American Purity
Alliance and the American Vigilance Committee.[L] Dr. David Starr Jordon of Stanford University is the
president of this new Association. The purpose of the Association is
the suppression of commercialized vice and the promotion of the highest
standard of public morals.

Stanley W. Finch has been appointed by the government as a White Slave
Traffic Commissioner with about six hundred special officers to carry
on a vigorous campaign in every state for the extermination of this
evil. The Federal law applies to interstate cases where a woman is taken
from one state to another and actual buying and selling.[M] We have secured in our own state such laws as are
necessary for the suppression of this traffic except the Injunction
and Abatement measure which we failed of getting last session because
of lack of time, and which we hope to get at our coming legislature.

PROHIBITION.

There was never more prohibition sentiment than now. At the close of
the Maine campaign our National President Mrs. L.M.N. Stevens said:
"The remarkable campaign just closed has revealed that there is a world
wide interest, not alone in total abstinence, but in prohibition, and
the day of the final overthrow of the liquor traffic has been hastened."
And she issued a call for "active co-operation of all temperance, prohibition,
religious and philanthropic bodies; all patriotic and civic associations
and all Americans who love their country" to place prohibition in the
constitution of the United States within ten years.[N] The first step toward this was taken when Captain
Richmond P. Hobson introduced a joint resolution in Congress for a prohibitory
amendment to the constitution.[O] The new slogan "A saloonless nation
in 1920" seems to have caught the popular fancy and it will echo and
re-echo until "With ballots plenty, in nineteen twenty, a saloonless
nation we shall be."

The situation in our country today points toward national prohibition
for every state is doing something toward settling the problem of drink.
Several states are in a campaign this year for state wide prohibition.
Colorado will vote upon a prohibitory amendment in November and the
vote will be watched with interest for women vote in Colorado.[P] This will be the first state to vote
on the question of state wide prohibition where women have full suffrage.
Each state winning prohibitory laws will help to bring national prohibition.
The W.C.T.U. women of Minnesota stand pledged to do our best to win
prohibition for our state. We cannot vote but if we could get every
man, woman and child who is not in favor of the saloon at work, victory
would be assured. Speakers are good, we cannot do without them in a
campaign, the distribution of literature is important and must be done,
but the personal work will count for more than anything else and is
the best means of winning the victory.

A Minneapolis Tribune editorial of March 1912 said: "If there
is any spirit left in the people of Minnesota, we expect to see a large
increase in the prohibition vote in the fall election. The village elections
show a considerable increase on the simple question, prohibition or
license, but that does not touch the real issue."[Q] The Minnesota W.C.T.U. is out to win in the real issue,
state wide prohibition. A resolution has been presented to and adopted
by several organizations, religious and otherwise, giving co-operation
in electing men to our coming legislature who will support a measure
for submitting a prohibitory constitutional amendment to the people.
A systematic campaign has been carried on by placing in the hands of
the voters in the state more than fifty thousand leaflets. And from
all over the state comes the glad tidings of the interest manifested
in this campaign, not alone by our W.C.T.U. women but by others, men
as well as women. Our National president said the women of Maine, worked
like heroes in their campaign and I am sure the women of Minnesota will
do as well.

We stand at the beginning of a new year in our work. We know not what
it will bring to us. But this we do know, that in the vocabulary of
the W.C.T.U. there is no such word as fail. We are out to win. We are
in the midst of a battle for state wide prohibition and we shall never
know defeat, victory may be delayed but it will come. God lives and
right will prevail. But if we win in this battle we must be ready for
our part. Victory means more devotion to our cause, it means more self-sacrifices
than we have been willing to make before, it means more work than we
have put into the W.C.T.U. heretofore. But it is worth while. Have you
not caught the vision of the homes protected, children free from the
evil of drink, the tears wiped from the faces of mothers, sisters and
wives. Let us put ourselves into this work, into this campaign for state
wide prohibition, let us work and pray as we never have before, for
the homes, for the boys and for the girls of Minnesota.

Respectfully
submitted, ROZETTE HENDRIX.

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A.
Omitted are expressions of gratitude toward the St. Paul Unions.Back
to Text

B.
Under the Exchange Bureau, women of the local unions contributed copies of
papers they prepared so that other W.C.T.U. women could use them. Rozette
Hendrix, "State President's Annual Address," Minutes of the Thirty-Fourth
Annual Meeting of the W.C.T.U. of the State of Minnesota (Minneapolis:
Thurston & Gould, 1910), pp. 42-43. Back
to Text

D.
Martha Allen, Alcohol, A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine: How and Why:
What Medical Writers Say (Norwich, Conn.: Chas.C. Haskell & Son, 1900);
and, Sir Victor Horsley and Mary Sturge, Alcohol and the Human Body; An
Introduction to the Study of the Subject, and a Contribution to National Health
2d ed, (London: Macmillan, 1908). Back
to Text

E. The
Bureau of Child Labor in the Department of Commerce was established April
9, 1912. Taft appointed Julia C. Lathrop, a former Hull House worker, Bureau
chief on April 17, 1912. New York Times (April 10, 1912), p. 22:7 and
(April 18, 1912), p. 17:3; and, Minnesota White Ribbon (June 1912),
p. 1. Back
to Text

F. Conference
members called for "the abolition of child labor, reduction of working hours
to the lowest practicable point, safeguarding the conditions of toil for women,
equable division of the profits of industry, protection of workers from the
risks of unemployment, and provision for old and injured workers." New
York Times (May 2, 1912), p. 5:2. Back
to Text

G. On
December 14, 1911, the Pure Food Board of the Department of Agriculture prohibited
the importation of absinthe under the Food and Drugs Act, effective January
1, 1912. New York Times (Dec. 15, 1911), p. 2:1. Back
to Text

H. The
May 1912 issue was the last issue of this journal of the Columbian-Sterling
Publishing Company. Back
to Text

I.
Frank Wakeley Gunsaulus was a Congregational minister, founder and president
of the Armour Institute of Technology, a civic leader in Chicago, and in 1912
he was a professor at the University of Chicago. Dictionary of American
Biography 8, ed. Dumas Malone, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946),
p. 53. Back
to Text

J.
George Cotterill was elected Mayor of Seattle on March 6, 1912. He was national
president of the Independent Order of Good Templars. Gill, whose administration
was blamed for corruption and vice, was recalled a year earlier with the votes
of newly enfranchised women. New York Times (March 7, 1912), p. 1:4.
Back
to Text

M.
Stanley Finch was the Chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department
of Justice. The new commission's duty was to systematically investigate and
prosecute cases of white slavery. Minnesota White Ribbon (June 1912),
p. 1. Back
to Text

N.
As a representative of the World's and National W.C.T.U.s at the Congress
Against Alcoholism in Portland, Maine, Lillian Stevens proclaimed, "that within
a decade prohibition shall be placed in the constitution of the United States,"
thus beginning the final campaign for national prohibition. Minnesota White
Ribbon (November 1911), p. 1. Back
to Text

P.
Prohibition succeeded in Colorado in the November 1914 election, and became
effective in 1916. Ernest Cherrington, The Anti-Saloon League Yearbook
(Westerville, Ohio: American Issue Press, 1915), p. 121. Back
to Text

Q.
This quotation actually ends, ". . . the simple question of prohibition or
license, but that does not touch the real and burning issue." The "real issue"
in the editorial was corruption in the state legislature. Minneapolis Tribune
(March 14, 1912), p. 4. Back
to Text

R.
Omitted are the "MEMORIAL," "CONCLUSION," and the "REPORT" sections. Back
to Text